Team Awesome Review

The Edis Brothers, creators of Diversion, are back with a high-flying new endless runner: Team Awesome. When a giant crystal comet hits the moon, crystal shards fall from the sky and turn one ordinary man into a high-flying super hero, who is determined to stop car thieves, toxic waste dumpers, and hoverboarders. Skateboarding is not a crime; hoverboarding most assuredly is. The player, in control of this blonde dynamo and his cohorts, can tap to jump and hold down to fly, along the way collecting coins, powerups, and blue crystals to keep the run going, with red crystals proving to be the hero’s downfall. Also, walls.

The dynamic camera angles give the game a much different look and feel than other endless runners: it gives a view of the world around the player, as well as making the game feel more lively. The ability to fly is extremely fun, getting to reach the kind of heights that Barry Steakfries could only dream of. I played an early version of the game at GDC, and it was easily the best part of the experience, and it’s great to see it in its final form. The level-based structure brings a lot of visual and gameplay variety. Instead of flying through the same environments over and over, players may fly through a city at night, or a toxic waste factory, each with their own objectives to complete. It means that there’s a balance of endless runner repetition with the variety of a true level-based game, and it’s something I’d like to see more of. There's also plenty of humor with in-game signs, and little things like construction workers in one level repairing the wall that keeps getting busted through at the beginning.

Unfortunately, because the Awesome meter drains so quickly, the game becomes too often a quest to stay religiously on the path of the blue crystals, because missing one or two can spell doom. I would prefer to see the meter drain slowly, and then drain faster with things like hitting walls or red crystals; sessions feel like they end too quickly, and without much positive input from me on how it should go, instead it kind of just hits an end point. Also, the rapidly-decreasing meter means that getting to reach great heights is discouraged because it’s about staying on the path with blue crystals.

Team Awesome is not perfect, but its 2.5D flying gameplay certainly does make it stand out from a sea of endless runners on the App Store.